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Vandalblast Discussion

2 days ago

@molok, I don't really find that the game works out that way. There's actually a lot of ways to kill Xantcha cause there's so much creature removal in the deck already - Toxic Deluge, Rolling Earthquake, Death Cloud, Fire Covenant, Chaos Warp, Damnation, and sometimes Engineered Explosives, or Bonus Round + Abrade. So usually if you have a ton of mana to spend on Xantcha then you end up drawing a bunch of cards, and you draw one of these or a tutor to get one. Typically if you've created that much mana you're basically winning anyway, so you can do pretty much what you want.

There's not really enough creatures to make Phyrexian Tower worth using. Also I don't typically like artifact lands - they're basically worse than basic lands since they don't function with a Blood Moon and get hosed by other people's Null Rod, Back to Basics, or Vandalblast or By Force or whatever. You can't fetch them, etc. There's just not enough benefit since it's just to help turn on Mox Opal, it doesn't outweight all the risks.

And if you build it, let me know how it goes! I'd love to hear about it. If you're gonna try it out, you could just start with the build I have; it'll work pretty ok for a CEDH meta with several green-based decks. :)

This should give me a little more control, and has added some much needed combos in.
Still not where I want to be with the deck overall yet, but all I could afford to put in for now.
Will make some more changes after Christmas is out of the way, and once I have played with it a bit more to see what exactly needs doing.

5 days ago

1 week ago

Slow down opponents' ability to cast spells, which forces opponents to keep cards in hand

Force opponents to discard, limiting their options

Use discard triggers to punish opponents

This sounds like it can work with Bolas. The risk I'd point out is with the discard punishers, specifically ones like Megrim and Liliana's Caress. They can be a little fragile - once the opponent no longer has any cards, you stop getting triggers. They're nice incidental damage and can add up, but you can't rely on them to actually close out the game. Bolas is also not ideally suited to the stax plan - he doesn't inherently break symmetry, so there are much better options for hard stax.

Your MVP cards in a discard-based strategy are going to be Geth's Grimoire and Waste Not, with Notion Thief as a runner-up. You're playing a control game, and control requires keeping your hand full.

Wheels that discard are going to be excellent for you, getting a ton of discard triggers. Ignore wheels that shuffle and then draw without discarding.

For the stax package - Back to Basics is going to be your best target. Use it with Frozen AEther so that all opponents' lands enter tapped, and Basics can keep them tapped down.

Back to Basics doesn;t stop you from using your own fetches (even budget slow-fetches) since you only use those once - they don;t need to untap. Blood Moon works, and it sets your nonbasics to one of your actual colors, but it also turns all your fetches into Mountains. Watch out for that.

I'd also look at Ruination. It's MLD...but it only blows up non-basic lands. It's exactly what you're doing with the enchantments, but with removal.

You already seem to know the mana rock drill from your Nekusar deck. You want to lean heavily on the mana rocks - all of the 2CMC signets/talismans/Fellwar Stone. Fellwar is going to get much less useful once you land Bloood Moon though. Star Compass is useful since you'll be loading heavily on basic lands. Coldsteel Heart is useful to plug a specific color hole. Obviously Sol Ring. You're going to be looking for color fixing more than anything, so Chromatic Lantern is worth the extra mana, and any Mox you can afford are worthwhile (except Mox Amber, that one's less useful).

Blood Moon and Back to Basics are great, but they likely are not enough to consistently slow opponents enough to be wroth all of this workaround by themselves. Even Ruination doesn't add enough. Unfortunately Grixis doesn;t have any of the neat land-untap triggers like Nature's Will or Seedborn Muse - if it did, you could abuse things like Stasis and Rising Waters and Static Orb more easily. Still, you could support Winter Orb with enough mana rocks. Be sure to run good one-sided artifact removal like Vandalblast to keep opponents from using their own rocks.

And of course Omniscience can let you blow up all the artifacts and lands and still play what you want. You'll be running a ton of rocks anyway, which could ramp you into it fairly early.

The big thing, though, is how you want to win. Stax doesn;t work super well on its own - you need to be using stax to slow your opponents down so that you can pull off your own win condition. Do you have any ideas on how youd like to win, even if just generally? Combat, combos, punisher effects like Megrim, mill, etc?

1 week ago

Chains is totally a non-budget upgrade, probably over E-Bridge.

Also, yes, this deck is Teferi's well-rounded, less loved brother, in more colors, but is smaller and so is overlooked.

It could be tier 1 given a few more cards come out, considering that Yisan is also tier 1 by some placements. This deck could easily be equal to that midrange list, however I would personally make a few major changes.

Helm of Obedience is a weak wincon in cEDH, not bad in your meta, but in cEDH I would swap it out easily, as it alone is a dead draw. Nether Void seems a little bad to me, 4 mana is a lot, but it shuts out decks like Trinisphere, expect has less ability to have a broken parity. It could be good, I am unsure.

1 week ago

I'm generally not too worried on permanents for Bloom Tender as generally Intet is there on the battlefield with Bloom out. If not 2 for 2 is still value with the general low curve of the deck. I actually have been trying to find more red permanents or spells to add in the deck, it's just that so many of the things that red provides are just outclassed by what the blue/green side of the pie can provide. unfortunately most of the time I use Bloom Tenders mana in conjunction with Intet's...My meta doesn't see Bloom Tender in a deck with 3 colors as lets say a 5C Najeela can do.

Going on to the next point, when Intet goes off it is generally pretty hard to stop even without the counter spell back up due to having Vexing Shusher and Boseiju. Consistently she can go off by turn 5-6, but I already accepted that she can't be a true competitive tier, but I can definitely see this build as being high powered. She can't consistently pull the T3 threatening rule.

Card Choices:

Bring to Light I actually agree with you on this, this has been my flex spot and been actually testing it out. This was actually to mainly get my wheels as the most important thing for Intet is consistent CA or having a fully stock hand. There is the time that this can get you an extra turn due to Mana Confluence/City of Brass but the chances are unlikely to have both in play the same game.

Dack Fayden I agree on the same sentiments, he hasn't been spectacular, but he has his uses when I steal artifacts, but that's just it. He can help me dig but I might as well use Faithless Looting for sheer efficiency.

Nissa, Vital Force As I said with Bring to Light, CA is key, she does make all my land ramp spells into cantrips as well, 5 is a lot and my usual rule of the thumb is that in any competitive EDH deck 5 cmc cards have to do one of two things, A) Give an tremendous advantage or B) Wins you the game. She gives a lot of advantage in being a unkillable CA and being able to activate a turn after. She would be the last to cut if I'm given the choice atm unless there is a better consistent CA engine.

Heroic Intervention Now I haven't truly tested this card out as of yet as this card was swapped in from a Mox Diamond, I saw the potential and this was pre-anti counter spell mindset. So yes this card can be cut to test a counter suite package.

Krosan Grip currently at the moment, I'm not having any problems with this nor do I have any problems casting it and it always comes in clutch when I need the split second the most. There are plenty of Paradox combo decks in my area as well as Jhoira decks so indeed the split second is a meta call but I like it in this deck as of now.

I do appreciate the insight, and I am not as stubborn about the anti-counter spell as I was before like 3 years ago. My current goal is to refine Intet as far as possible, so right now these are the changes I'm going to include into Intet but I want to know your thoughts.

I have a couple questions for you since you seem to have a good head on your shoulders and as well as some great perspective and MTG experience.

In forgoing hard land ramp, would you think cutting cards like Kodama's Reach/Cultivate for fast rocks be better? or would you say the other way around and cut the 2 cmc ramp spells for the 2 cmc rocks as with the 3 cmc ramp they replace itself. I have already cut out Skyshroud Claim months ago and I haven't entirely missed it at all.

What red permanent/spell do you know that can help this version of Intet? I been doing research a lot and I could of missed some. That has been my biggest dilemma aside from tuning Intet to the most optimal version of herself. There is a entire lack of red and basically the red is in here for the Wheel of Fortune and Vandalblast, I used to run Chaos Warp as well but that has been cut out as sometimes it can benefit the opponent more, slight chance, but a chance nonetheless.

Thanks again for your insight, I have a feeling that after these next couple discussions Intet will be reborn into a new iteration of herself, I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

1 week ago

Thanks for a detailed reply!

What I was expecting in the ramp section is more rocks, signets specifically (Simic Signet, Izzet Signet and Gruul Signet). Having 34 lands is fine, but rocks make it more likely for you to hit your land drops past t2-3 since you're not stripping your deck bare of lands. Also they make hands without green sources much easier to keep since rocks can cover you up if you end up needing green. If your meta has a lot of Vandalblast effects it would make sense, but other than that (over)reliance on green in 3+c, especially with a fine budget like yours, doesn't make sense to me personally.
Also, and this is a smaller concern, at Mana Vault starts to look quite appealing as a pseudo-ritual to enable intet t2/3 more reliably.

As for counters, I'm a blue mage at heart and I might be biased here.
But from your description it seems like your counters package could've been better when you played it. Cheap and efficient counters, such as Dispel, Flusterstorm or Mana Leak, are the best at protecting combos and keeping you in the game. Much better than Counterflux or Misdirection. Their low cmc makes it easier to leave mene open for them. And though paying for 1 or 2 mana counterspell is a feels bad moment, when you take into account that you spent that mana to both "draw" a counter (so it's a clear +1 instead of +0 when cast) and to pay for it in advance (which is very useful bc with just 2-3 cards exiled, any form of counterwars math on your opponents' part falls apart. This also makes tapping out much easier, making it possible for you to milk all the value from the mana available to you). In my opinion it's good. Just "good" is nothing compared to a Expropriate of course, but being a blue player that I am I tend to evaluate cards depending a lot on their floor value instead on their ceiling. If you don't cast your counters, either your manabase/your sequencing/opponents' sequencing got better of you OR there was nothing to counter. In the first scenario counters are not to blame, s**t happens, and in the other one you're probably in a good shape counters or not. But if you can/have to expend your counters, if they were used well, they either saved your butt or handed you the win. In both cases they're literally deciding the game. Again, though casting a counter for is a feels bad moment, even greater feels bad moment is having no response at a game-deciding play or, even worse, having a response, but being 1-2 (colored) mana short to cast it.

Again, my blue devil (TM) horns might be showing too much. I'm not saying you should cram in a dozen of the most popular counters in the game, there is neither such need nor space, but maybe you could use few really efficient ones. My personal recommendations would be;

Flusterstorm - this bad boy gets better the more competitive your meta gets. In a meta where people are likely to cast multiple spells per turn and to do it early, this practically becomes an uncounterable counter that dismantles storm by itself. All for a low low price of

Negate - is a very reasonable mana cost even in 4c decks, and the non-creature drawback is minimal

Counterspell - the classic. In hyper-competitive metas might be pushing it too far, but in 3c it's still reasonable enough to be considered

Dispel - great for coutnerwars and dealing with non-wrath removal, especially in competitive

Spell Pierce&Mana Leak - these get worse as the game drags on so evaluate these with a grain of salt. But if you're up against fast decks a lot, these might be the silver bullet you need

Stubborn Denial - this one is great if you get Intet to stick, and even before that having a bit worse Force Spike isn't the worst thing in the world, especially in competitive

Just so that we're clear; I like the deck. And I don't doubt it works for you in your meta. I also think that its perfectly fine if someone wants to build their deck their way, it's their deck after all. But the moment I see something referred to as "competitive", I hold that deck to a very high standard to the point of becoming stingy. I'm sorry if what's written or the amount of it left a different impression.

1 week ago

Wow you were not kidding when you said you had massive changes for this deck. Most of cards that you added and cut seem to make sense as a whole, but there are a few changes I found surprising. As you said, you wanted to cut cards that only helped you cast creatures, so taking out cards like Urza's Incubator makes sense, but I was a little bit surprised that you took out Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. This card is insanely powerful in creature decks like this one, and gets even better with cards like Paradox Engine. I personally am also not a fan of having most of your removal only dealing with creatures, other than the Cyclonic Rift and Vandalblast, which means you only have one card that deal with enchantments, but it doesn't destroy it, just bounces it to hand. I feel like one of either Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile could be something like a Beast Within or Anguished Unmaking. The lack of basics was surprising, but if your meta doesn't run anything like Ghost Quarter or Field of Ruin, then it really isn't that big of a deal. I also feel like Homeward Path and Dragonlord Silumgar are kind of a non-bo, and I think that the dragonlord could be swapped for something else for this reason. I do like the addition of Lotus Cobra as it works insanely well with fetch lands, as being able to produce up to three mana off of one land is insane. I also like Boneyard Scourge and Thunderbreak Regent. They are definitely some of the weaker dragons, but having recursion or punishment for your opponents hitting your stuff, as well as being early game beaters is really good. Chromium, the Mutable was an interesting addition that I didn't expect, but flash, uncounterable, built-in protection, AND a 7/7 for six mana is pretty powerful. Overall, I think the new decklist is insanely powerful, just a little lacking in more versatile removal.

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